The Serum
by KateTheCat
Summary: What if, in Divergent, Four had gotten shot instead of Tris? What if she had been injected as a test subject instead of him? Please read, I'm just bad at summaries. Rated T for violence. AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own Divergent. Most of this chapter is an excerpt from it, though. But Divergent still belongs to Veronica Roth**

One by one, the Dauntless soldiers in front of me step away to perform one task or another. Soon, the leaders will notice that whatever signals everyone else is getting, I'm not getting them. What will I do when that happens?

"This is insane," coos a male voice on my right. I see a lock of long, greasy hair, and a silver earring. Eric. He pokes my cheek with his index finger, and I struggle against the impulse to slap his hand away.

"They really can't see us? Or hear us?" a female voice asks.

"Oh, they can see and hear. They just aren't processing what they see and hear the same way," says Eric. "They receive commands from our computers in the transmitters we injected them with…" At this, he presses his fingers to the injection site to show the woman where it is. Stay still, I tell myself. Still, still, still. "…and carry them out seamlessly."

Eric shifts a step to the side and leans close to Tobias's face, grinning.

"Now, this is a happy sight," he says. "The legendary Four. No one's going to remember that I came in second now, are they? No one's going to ask me, 'What was it like to train with the guy who has only four fears?'" He draws his gun and points it at Tobias's right temple. My heart pounds so hard I feel it in my skull. He can't shoot; he wouldn't. Eric tilts his head. "Think anyone would notice if he accidentally got shot?"

"Go ahead," the woman says, sounding bored. She must be a Dauntless leader if she can give Eric permission. "He's nothing now."

"Too bad you didn't just take Max up on his offer, Four. Well, too bad for _you_ , anyway," says Eric quietly, as he clicks the bullet into its chamber.

My lungs burn; I haven't breathed in almost a minute. I see Tobias's hand twitch in the corner of my eye, but my hand is already on my gun. I press the barrel to Eric's forehead. His eyes widen, and his face goes slack, and for a second he looks like another sleeping Dauntless soldier.

My index finger hovers over the trigger.

"Get your gun away from his head," I say.

"You won't shoot me," Eric replies.

"Interesting theory," I say. But I can't murder him; I can't. I grit my teeth and shift my arm down, firing at Eric's foot. He screams and grabs his foot with both hands. The moment his gun is no longer pointed at Tobias's head, Tobias draws his gun and fires at Eric's friend's leg. I don't wait to see if the bullet hits her. I grab Tobias's arm and sprint.

If we can make it to the alley, we can disappear into the buildings and they won't find us. There are two hundred yards to go. I hear footsteps behind us, but I don't look back. Tobias grabs my hand and squeezes, pulling me forward, faster than I have ever run, faster than I can run. I stumble behind him. I hear a gunshot.

Darkness blooms across the back of Tobias's shoulder, beginning at his shoulder and spreading outward. I hear a scream stop in his throat, and he falls, his cheek scraping the pavement. I drop to my knees next to him. He lifts his head to meet my eyes, and yells, "Run!"

My voice is calm and quiet as I reply, "No."

In seconds we are surrounded. I help Tobias up, supporting his weight. I have trouble holding him up, as he is bigger than me. Dauntless soldiers surround us and point their guns.

"Divergent rebels," Eric says, standing on one foot. His face is a sickly white. "Surrender your weapons."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: This is a repost of chapter two because I realized it was in html code, so... Anyhoo, enjoy!**

Tobias leans heavily on me. A gun barrel pressed to my spine urges me forward, through the front doors of Abnegation headquarters, a plain gray building, two stories high. Blood trickles down Tobias's side. I'm not afraid of what's coming; I'm in too worried about Tobias to think about it.

The gun barrel pushes me toward a door guarded by two Dauntless soldiers. Tobias and I walk through it and enter a plain office that contains just a desk, a computer, and two empty chairs. Jeanine sits behind the desk, a phone against her ear.

"Well, send some of them back on the train, then," she says. "It needs to be well guarded, it's the most important part—I'm not talk—I have to go." She snaps the phone shut and focuses her gray eyes on me. They remind me of melted steel.

"Divergent rebels," one of the Dauntless says. He must be a Dauntless leader—or maybe a recruit who was removed from the simulation.

"Yes, I can see that." She takes her glasses off, folds them, and sets them on the desk. She probably wears the glasses out of vanity rather than necessity, because she thinks they make her look smarter— my father said so.

"You," she says, pointing at me, "I expected. All the trouble with your aptitude test results made me suspicious from the beginning. But you…"

She shakes her head as she shifts her eyes to Tobias.

"You, Tobias—or should I call you Four?—managed to elude me," she says quietly. "Everything about you checked out: test results, initiation simulations, everything. But here you are nonetheless." She folds her hands and sets her chin on top of them. "Perhaps you could explain to me how that is?"

"You're the genius," he says coolly. I can barely believe he's making comments like that through the pain of a gunshot wound. "Why don't you tell me?"

Her mouth curls into a smile. "My theory is that you really do belong in Abnegation. That your Divergence is weaker."

She smiles wider. Like she's amused. I grit my teeth and consider lunging across the table and strangling her.

"Your powers of deductive reasoning are stunning," spits Tobias. "Consider me awed."

I look sideways at him. I had almost forgotten about this side of him—the part that is more likely to explode than to lie down and die.

"Now that your intelligence has been verified, you might want to get on with killing us." Tobias closes his eyes. "You have a lot of Abnegation leaders to murder, after all."

If Tobias's comments bother Jeanine, she doesn't let on. She keeps smiling and stands smoothly. She wears a blue dress that hugs her body from shoulder to knee, revealing a layer of pudge around her middle. Tobias slumps against me for support. I slides my arm around him, trying to support him from the waist.

"Don't be silly. There is no rush," she says lightly. "You are both here for an extremely important purpose. You see, it perplexed me that the Divergent were immune to the serum that I developed, so I have been working to remedy that. I thought I might have, with the last batch, but as you know, I was wrong. Luckily I have another batch to test."

"Why bother?" She and the Dauntless leaders had no problem killing the Divergent in the past. Why would that change now?

She smirks at me.

"I have had a question since I began the Dauntless project, and it is this." She sidesteps her desk, skimming the surface with her finger. "Why are most of the Divergent weak-willed, God-fearing nobodies from Abnegation, of all factions?"

I didn't know that most of the Divergent came from Abnegation, and I don't know why that would be. And I probably won't live long enough to figure it out.

"Weak-willed," I scoff. "It requires a strong will to manipulate a simulation, last time I checked. Weak-willed is mind-controlling an army because it's too hard for you to train one yourself."

"I am not a fool," says Jeanine. "A faction of intellectuals is no army. We are tired of being dominated by a bunch of self-righteous idiots who reject wealth and advancement, but we couldn't do this on our own. And your Dauntless leaders were all too happy to oblige me if I guaranteed them a place in our new, improved government."

"Improved," I say, snorting.

"Yes, improved," Jeanine says. "Improved, and working toward a world in which people will live in wealth, comfort, and prosperity."

"At whose expense?" Tobias asks, his voice thick and sluggish. "All that wealth…doesn't come from nowhere."

"Currently, the factionless are a drain on our resources," Jeanine replies. "As is Abnegation. I am sure that once the remains of your old faction are absorbed into the Dauntless army, Candor will cooperate and we will finally be able to get on with things."

Absorbed into the Dauntless army. I know what that means—she wants to control them, too. She wants everyone to be pliable and easy to control.

"Get on with things," Tobias repeats bitterly. He raises his voice. "Make no mistake. You will be dead before the day is out, you—"

"Perhaps if you could control your temper," Jeanine says, her words cutting cleanly across Tobias's,"you would not be in this situation to begin with, Tobias."

"I'm in this situation because you put me here," he snaps. "The second you orchestrated an attack against innocent people."

"Innocent people." Jeanine laughs. "I find that a little funny, coming from you. I would expect Marcus's son to understand that not all those people are innocent." She perches on the edge of the desk, her skirt pulling away from her knees, which are crossed with stretch marks. "Can you tell me honestly that you wouldn't be happy to discover that your father was killed in the attack?"

"No," says Tobias through gritted teeth. "But at least his evil didn't involve the widespread manipulation of an entire faction and the systematic murder of every political leader we have."

They stare at each other for a few seconds, long enough to make me feel tense to my core, and then Jeanine clears her throat.

"What I was going to say," she says, "is that soon, dozens of the Abnegation and their young children will be my responsibility to keep in order, and it does not bode well for me that a large number of them may be Divergent like yourselves, incapable of being controlled by the simulations."

She stands and walks a few steps to the left, her hands clasped in front of her. Her nail beds, like mine, are bitten raw.

"Therefore, it was necessary that I develop a new form of simulation to which they are not immune. I have been forced to reassess my own assumptions. That is where you come in." She paces a few steps to the right. "You are correct to say that you are strong-willed. I cannot control your will. But there are a few things I can control."

She stops and turns to face us. Tobias leans his head on my shoulder.

She presses her palms together. I see no vicious glee in her eyes, and not a hint of the sadism I expect. She is more machine than maniac. She sees problems and forms solutions based on the data she collects. Abnegation stood in the way of her desire for power, so she found a way to eliminate it. She didn't have an army, so she found one in Dauntless. She knew that she would need to control large groups of people in order to stay secure, so she developed a way to do it with serums and transmitters. Divergence is just another problem for her to solve, and that is what makes her so terrifying—because she is smart enough to solve anything, even the problem of our existence.

"I can control what you see and hear," she says. "So I created a new serum that will adjust your surroundings to manipulate your will. Those who refuse to accept our leadership must be closely monitored."

Monitored—or robbed of free will. She has a gift with words.

"You will be the first test subject, Beatrice. Tobias, however…" She smiles. "You are too injured to be of much use to me, so your execution will occur at the conclusion of this meeting."

I try to hide the shudder that goes through me at the word "execution," and look up at Tobias. It's hard to blink the tears back when I see the terror in Tobias's wide, dark eyes.

"No," I say. My voice trembles, but my look is stern as I shake my head. "I would rather die."

"I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice in the matter," replies Jeanine lightly.

I take Tobias's face in my hands roughly and kiss him, the pressure of my lips pushing his apart. I am grateful that the memory of that kiss will be fresh in my mind as I meet my end, because they will surely kill me for what I am about to do.

Then I release him and he has to lean against the wall for support. With no more warning than the tightening of muscles, I lunge across the desk and wrap my hands around Jeanine's throat.

The Dauntless guards by the door leap at me, their guns held ready.

It takes two Dauntless soldiers to pull me away from Jeanine and shove me to the ground. I feel like how I did when I fought Molly, hatred flowing in my veins. One of the soldiers pins me down, his knees on my shoulders and his hands on my head, pressing my face to the carpet. I hear Tobias lunge toward them, but then I hear a thud against the wall.

I hear Jeanine spluttering and gasping. A drawer opens.

Still breathing heavily, I hear her footsteps as she walks towards me. I grits his teeth and elbows one of the guards in the face. The guard slams the heel of his gun into the side of my head, and I feel a prick as Jeanine sticks the needle into my neck.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/n: This chapter is kinda short, but if I put it with the other chapter it would've been to long**

Tobias POV

I watch as Jeanine inject Tris with the serum. She goes limp.

A sound escapes my mouth, not a sob or a scream, but a croaking, scraping moan that sounds detached, like it is coming from someone else.

"Let her up," says Jeanine, her voice scratchy.

The guard gets up, and so does Tris. She does not look like the sleepwalking Dauntless soldiers; her eyes are alert. She looks around for a few seconds as if confused by what she sees. She looks at me, her eyes cold, before the flash with recognition and her eyes go cold again.

"Tris," I say. "Tris!"

"She doesn't know you," says Jeanine.

Her eyes narrow and she starts toward me, fast. Before the guards can stop her, she closes a hand around my throat, squeezing my trachea with her fingertips. I choke, my face hot with blood.

"The simulation manipulates her," says Jeanine. I can barely hear her over the pounding in my ears. "By altering what she sees— making her confuse enemy with friend."

One of the guards pulls Tris off me. I gasp, drawing a rattling breath into my lungs.

She is gone. Controlled by the simulation, she will now murder the people I called innocent not three minutes ago. Jeanine killing her would have hurt less than this.

"The advantage to this version of the simulation," she says, her eyes alight, "is that he can act independently, and is therefore far more effective than a mindless soldier." She looks at the guards who hold Tris back. She struggles against them, her muscles taut, her eyes focused on me, but not seeing me, not seeing me the way they used to. "Send her to the control room. We'll want a sentient being there to monitor things."

Jeanine presses her palms together in front of her. "And take him to room B13," she says. She flaps her hand to dismiss me. That flapping hand commands my execution, but to her it is just crossing off an item from a list of tasks, the only logical progression of the particular path that she is on. She surveys me without feeling as two Dauntless soldiers pull me out of the room.

They drag me down the hallway. I feel numb inside, but outside I am a screaming, thrashing force of will. I bite a hand that belongs to the Dauntless man on my right and smile as I taste blood. Then he hits me, and there is nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

Tobias POV

I wake the dark, wedged in a hard corner. The floor beneath me is smooth and cold. I touch my throbbing head and liquid slips across my fingertips. Red—blood. When I bring my hand back down, my elbow hits a wall. Where am I?

A light flickers above me. The bulb is blue and dim when it's lit.

I see the walls of a tank around me, and my shadowed reflection across from me. The room is small, with concrete walls and no windows, and I am alone in it. Well, almost—a small video camera is attached to one of the concrete walls. There Is some kind of metal contraptions attached to the outside of the tank.

The trembling starts in my fingertips and spreads up my arms, and soon my body is shuddering.

I'm not in a simulation this time.

My right arm is numb. When I push myself out of the corner, I see a pool of blood where I was sitting. I can't panic now. I stand, leaning against a wall, and breathe. The worst thing that can happen to me now is that I get crushed by the glass walls. I press my forehead to the glass and laugh. That is the worst thing I can imagine. My laugh turns into a sob.

If I refuse to give up now, it will look brave to whoever watches me with that camera, but sometimes it isn't fighting that's brave, it's facing the death you know is coming. I sob into the glass. I'm not afraid of dying, but I want to die a different way, any other way.

It is better to scream than cry, so I scream and slam my heel into the wall behind me. My foot bounces off, and I kick again, so hard my heel throbs. I kick again and again and again, then pull back and throw my left shoulder into the wall. The impact makes the wound in my right shoulder burn like it got stuck with a hot poker.

The metal contraptions start to move, and the space in the tank starts to slowly shrink.

The video camera means they're watching me—no, studying me, as only the Erudite would. To see if my reaction in reality matches my reaction in the simulation. To prove that I'm a coward.

I uncurl my fists and drop my hands. I am not a coward. I lift my head and stare at the camera across from me. If I focus on breathing, I can forget that I'm about to die. I stare at the camera until my vision narrows and it is all I see. The glass walls come closer. One is almost touching me. I breathe in; I breathe out. I crouch in the space that is left. Of course only Jeanine Matthews would think of this kind of torture. I can still see the big room, but I'm trapped by the glass.

I breathe in. The wall is touching my arm. I breathe out. Another wall is touching my arm. I breathe in. I try to make myself smaller.

My breathes start to come faster. The walls are coming closer. I try to calm down. I am hyperventilating now.

I move into the position that I was in with Tris in my fear landscape. Thinking of Tris, I start to calm down.

 _Relax_. I close my eyes. I remember her lips as she kissed me when the final rankings were put up, her smile as she climbed the ferris wheel, her laugh as she hit the net. I try not to think of the mindless soldier she is now.

Suddenly, a wall presses into my shoulder and presses where I was shot. I might pass out from the pain. I feel like someone was sticking a block of salt in my wound and twisting it. I try not to faint. I try to keep thinking of Tris.

I remember how she would bite her cheek when she was lying, how she would blush at every PDA. I focus my thoughts on her, and I am not afraid. I open my eyes.

A dark figure stands in front of me. I must be close to passing out if I'm seeing things. Pain stabs my shoulder. This is painful. A palm presses to the glass in front of my face.

I hear a bang and another, and another, until the glass cracks. The pane breaks in half. I turn away as the glass shatters. I duck through the opening, eager to get out of the box. I tumble out, sprawling ungracefully on the floor, and I hear a voice.

"Only Jeanine would think of something as cruel as this. Crushing someone to death in a glass box," she says. She sounds so much like Tris. I get up, and in front of men stood Natalie Prior. She is holding a flash drive. "Come on, we have to run."

She is dressed like Natalie and she looks like Natalie, but she is holding a gun, and the determined look in her eyes is unfamiliar to me. I stumble beside her over broken glass and out an open doorway. Dauntless guards lie dead next to the door.

"Who are you?" I ask, but I already know. I am sure she remembers our conversation on Visiting day and I have no intention of letting her know that I have seen her anywhere else.

"Natalie Prior," she says. "You?"

"You're Tris's mother," I say. "We met on Visiting day. I was her instructor." She looks at me and recognition flashes in her eyes.

We walk down the hallway, as fast as my weak legs can go. When we turn the corner, she fires at the two guards standing by the door at the end. The bullets hit them both in the head, and they slump to the floor. She takes off her gray jacket.

She wears a sleeveless shirt. When she lifts her arm, I see the corner of a tattoo under her armpit.

"You were Dauntless," I say. I didn't realize that Natalie transferred to Abnegation.

"Yes," she says, smiling. She makes her jacket into a sling for my arm, tying the sleeves around my neck. "And it has served me well today. My husband and son and some others are hiding in a basement at the intersection of North and Fairfield. We have to go get them."

"Why are you here?" I ask.

I stare at her. I lived across the street from her for sixteen years and never once did I see any remnant of this side of her.

"There will be time for questions," she says. She lifts her shirt and slips a gun from under the waistband of her pants, offering it to me. "Now we must go."

She runs to the end of the hallway, and I run after her.

We are in the basement of Abnegation headquarters. Evelyn used to work there until she faked her death, so I'm not surprised when I realize that I still remember some of it as Natalie leads me down a few dark hallways, up a dank staircase, and into daylight again without interference. How many Dauntless guards did she shoot before she found me?

She stops where the alley intersects with the road.

I know now isn't the time for conversation. But there is something I need to say.

"Tris..." I say, not sure of how to start. "The whole of Dauntless is under a sim. The sim didn't work on certain people..."

"Divergents," she says. I am surprised she knows about them, but I remember that she used to administer aptitude tests.

"Yes," I reply. "Your daughter was one of them. I am one of them. We were captured, and… Tris was taken somewhere." I don't have the heart to tell her that Tris was put under a sim and is now probably helping to murder other Abnegation now.

She pushes the bullet chamber open and peers inside. Seeing how many bullets she has left. Then takes a few out of her pocket and reloads.

"Here they come," she says, looking around the corner. I peek over her shoulder and see a few Dauntless with guns, moving to the same beat, heading toward us. Natalie looks back. Far behind us, another group of Dauntless run down the alley, toward us, moving in time with one another.

"Go to the safehouse. The alley on the right, down to the basement. Knock twice, then three times, then six times." She hands my the flash drive. "Give this to Andrew Prior. I'm going to distract them. You have to run as fast as you can."

"No," I say. I know that war requires sacrifices, but I know that it will break Tris to know that her mother died, and I can't let this woman sacrifice herself for me. "I'm already shot. You go."

"You will be of more use to them. You know more about this than me," she says. "Be brave"

And then she holds her gun above her head and fires three times into the air. The Dauntless start running.

I sprint across the street and into the alley. As I run, I look over my shoulder to see if any Dauntless follow me. But Natalie fires into the crowd of guards, and they are too focused on her to notice me.

I whip my head over my shoulder when I hear them fire back. My feet falter and stop.

Natalie stiffens, her back arching. Blood surges from a wound in her abdomen, dyeing her shirt crimson. A patch of blood spreads over her shoulder.

She falls, first to her knees, her hands limp at her sides, and then to the pavement, slumped to the side like a rag doll. She is motionless and without breath.

The Dauntless soldiers turn as if moved by the same mind. Somehow I start running. I am brave.


End file.
